Read a Preview of My Crater Book

The book should be available in a matter of a few weeks, but you can now read the entire first chapter and snippets of the rest at Google Books. The first chapter focuses on the battle itself and pays specific attention to how Confederates assessed having to fight black soldiers. Other blogger/authors have expressed their frustration about these previews and I am certainly sympathetic. That said and apart from the legal issues involved I am not too concerned. In fact, I don’t think it will have much of an impact, if any, on sales. Times are tough for many people and if those interested can at least get a taste of what is in the book than I am happy. Ultimately, I wrote the book for it to be read and to stimulate discussion and hopefully lead to some understanding of this event.

I am pleased to see that the first chapter is previewed in its entirety. It covers material that has led to some pretty heated debates on this blog and has even reinforced the belief in a small number of people that my motivations for writing are based on a hatred of all things southern. Yes, how silly. The nice thing about a book is that you have to lay it all on the line. I did my best to interpret the battle based on the evidence collected and my thorough reading of relevant secondary sources. Ultimately all interpretations are incomplete and subject to correction.

It seems really odd so much copyrighted work is published on the internet. It is very similar to what’s happening in the music industry, but at least they can rationalize to themselves what they are losing on sales is recovered at least in part by live appearances. It seems more than a bit unfair to authors.

One question. How much larger (and deeper) was the crater at the time of the explosion than what we see today? Hadn’t been there in awhile and I was just looking at the trail which circles around it on Google Earth. The actual depression appears to take up about 1/3 of the area of the circle the trail makes around it. How much further out did the original area go?